INSIDE NAMIBIA

Published: August 1, 1982

(Page 2 of 6)

Central to Mr. Botha's calculation was the determination of the Reagan Administration to secure a cease-fire and settlement. It was the Reagan Administration that undertook last year to change the tactics of the group of Western nations, which four years ago had more or less cudgeled South Africa into agreeing on a plan for Namibian independence only to see the Botha Government put on a brilliant display of diplomatic filibustering in order to forestall the deal. Instead of threats, the Reagan Administration had offered the Botha Government a policy of ''constructive engagement'' which hinted that South Africa's pariah status in the West could be eased, if not ended, once it made good on its Namibia commitments.

Initially, South Africa had hoped to persuade the most friendly American Administration it was ever likely to see to look at Namibia the way it did El Salvador: to define the issue as one of stopping ''Communism'' rather than of ending colonialism. But Washington never fell for the idea that the dependence of the South-West Africa People's Organization on the Soviet bloc for arms meant it was a ''proxy force'' of the Soviet Union rather than the ideologically vague African nationalist movement it has always claimed, and appeared, to be. Instead, in June 1981, American negotiators headed by William P. Clark, then Deputy Secretary of State, nudged the South Africans around to the view that the withdrawal of 20,000 Cuban troops from Angola (where they have been since 1975, when South Africa invaded Angola) could be presented as a gain for South Africa. Of course, if the Cuban withdrawal could be orchestrated along with a Namibia settlement, it would also represent a triumph for the Reagan Administration - its first, by most reckonings, in foreign affairs.

Mr. Botha knows that whatever hopes he harbors for the Reagan Administration to ease the embargoes on enriched nuclear fuel, perhaps, or even on military equipment, would be dashed if his Government were held responsible for a failure on the Namibia plan. He also has to worry about being able to afford the Namibian war at a time when his military advisers are pressing ahead with costly preparations for an expected ''onslaught'' of South Africa's own black nationalists.

An economic determinist would have no trouble unraveling the tangled diplomatic history of Namibia. When gold, diamonds and uranium were in demand, South Africa could afford to call the Western bluff on sanctions. One-sixth of the whole country - the Namib Desert, from which the territory derives its name - is a vast diamond concession, and what was produced there underwrote as much as half the cost of administering Namibia. But now the international diamond cartel, managed by De Beers, a South African concern, has cut back drastically on operations and purchases; the world's largest uranium mine, also in the Namib, is on a tax holiday, providing no revenue to the state; the worst drought in a generation has done more to hurt ranching than Swapo infiltrators ever have, and no one is investing a dime in Namibia's uncertain future.

But there is another side to the ledger. Independence for Namibia would deprive the continent's last white bastion of its last buffer state. In strategic terms, independence would remove South African forces from bat- tle stations in Central Africa and almost certainly install the black national movement that South Africa has been trying to crush for most of two decades. White power would be unmistakably in retreat, and a message would go out to black as well as white South Africans that, sooner or later, there would have to be a deal with the outlawed black movements inside that white republic. That is why the Botha Government has seemed permanently schizoid on the question of Namibia and why many analysts still cannot believe in its willingness or ability to carry out the proposed agreement.

In this overcharged context, one thing often forgotten is the country itself, the real Namibia that lies under all the layers of argument and obfuscation like a hidden masterpiece covered with varnish, retouching and grime. While diplomatic discussions drone on in Washington and at the United Nations, that suffering country waits to be restored, not only so that onlookers can see it more clearly but so that it can rediscover itself. It is a land of harsh beauty and long vistas, in which the human presence seldom looms large. At midday, the sky in Namibia is pure glare; after dawn and before dusk, it is achingly blue. There are flamingos and seals along the coast, zebras and elephants inland, anthills taller than a man, and plants that seem to exist as monuments to the tenacity of organic life. On the long drive across the Namib, you may encounter more kudus and ostriches than people; even on the single surfaced road that runs down the country from north to south, it is often 100 or more miles between settlements. Turn off onto one of the dirt roads that wind toward a distant horizon and you can drive for 50 miles and pass only a couple of donkey carts, a herd of goats and a dozen or so hovels built of flattened gasoline cans. Nearly 80 percent of the one million Namibians live in the northern half of the country, a majority in a flat semitropical sliver that is roughly the upper tenth, within 80 miles of its long border with Angola.